Co-creator of Frontlines: Fuel of War speaks

Joe Halper chats about life after desert combat

Halper: Kaos Studios was started in late 2005 by the core members of Trauma Studios. We’re most known for our work on Desert Combat, as well as Battlefield 2. We were DICE New York, and then we became Kaos.

What was your actual involvement on BF2, as Trauma Studios?

Halper: Mostly we did the R&D. Desert Combat was pretty successful and DICE wanted us to develop some of the features on BF2 and prototype them. They had a new engine which looked great, and while they worked on that we created things like the Commander system, the artillery strikes, the squad systems and the VoIP. It worked out pretty well, and as a result we were acquired and became DICE New York. At the same time, EA started buying DICE, and that was business, that’s fine. However, they wanted us to move to Stockholm, and we had a really good team, so we decided to stay in New York and started communicating with THQ. And they said, “Great, let’s go.”